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Holyrood officials give bizarre excuse for not revealing SNP letters to rich and famous

THE SNP Government have refused to release letters and files because it would be too expensive to provide them.

The SNP has blocked the Daily Record's request of correspondence between the party and their celebrity friends (Photo: PA)

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THE Scottish Government have blocked a demand to reveal potentially embarrassing letters between SNP bosses and wealthy tycoons such as Rupert Murdoch and Sir Brian Souter.
The Daily Record used Freedom of Information laws to request details of correspondence between First Minister Nicola Sturgeon , her ­predecessor Alex Salmond and several high-profile people.
But
the Edinburgh Government have refused to release the ­information,
claiming it would be too ­expensive for them to locate the letters in
their files.
They claim it is impossible to easily trace past
communications with any individual, because their filing system
disregards names and collates only subject matters.

Alex Salmond and Rupert Murdoch Yet most email systems allow users to simply type a name
into a search box to view a history of their ­communications with that
person.When we made a similar request for access to Salmond’s emails two years ago , his advisers fought for six months not to hand them over.
It
took the ­intervention of the Scottish I­nformation Commissioner to
finally order their release, which left Salmond ­red-faced.
They showed the then first minister had been ignored by leading sports stars after sending out a string of gushing letters.
Salmond
wrote to Andy Murray eight times over a two-year period – once
congratulating him for his “near flawless tennis” – but failed to
receive a single response.

Sean Connery was another celebrity name on our list He also wrote fawning letters to former Manchester United
manager Sir Alex Ferguson and Olympic ­champion Sir Chris Hoy – but
never heard back from them either.
This time around we asked for
all correspondence between Salmond, Sturgeon and well-known figures
including Murdoch, Souter and Sir Sean Connery, as well as senior
figures in the BBC.
Anti-trade union print baron Murdoch last year hailed the former first minister as “my friend”.
He has also tweeted that Salmond was “clearly [the] most ­brilliant ­politician in [the] UK”.
The
friendship goes both ways, with Salmond referring to Murdoch as “Sir
Rupert” in a letter in 2008, even though the billionaire media tycoon
has not being knighted.Stagecoach group boss Souter is a long-standing donor to the SNP .
But
in a letter of refusal Rebecca Robb, private secretary to Deputy First
Minister John Swinney, said: “I can confirm the cost of complying would
exceed the upper cost limit set at £600.
“This is because as
explained in our original response, we do not file our information under
the names of individuals; instead information is filed by subject.
“Therefore
to find correspondence with particular individuals we would need to
trawl through files on almost every subject for which the Scottish
Government is responsible.”
We pointed out that our 2013 FOI
request for Salmond’s letters was finally complied with after the
­intervention of the information commissioner, but Robb rebuffed this,
claiming the Scottish ­Government were just trying to be “helpful” on
that occasion.

First Minister Alex Salmond
is watched by businessman and independence supporter Brian Souter as he
speaks to the media ahead of the Referendum (Photo: Andrew Milligan/PA) She wrote: “This was done ­exceptionally in order to be
helpful following errors in the handling of your initial request and
review request.
“That request related to 12 ­individuals whilst your current request relates to 18 which is 50 per cent longer.”
When
the request was refused we asked for a cost ­breakdown so that we could
reduce the number of letters that had to be collated if necessary.
But the breakdown was refused on the grounds that the law didn’t require that it was handed over.
The
Record has asked the Scottish Information Commissioner to investigate
the refusal to release the information and a preliminary probe is being
carried out.